


Saturn

by once_a_potato



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Soft Villanelle | Oksana Astankova, Their Love Is So
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24179224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/once_a_potato/pseuds/once_a_potato
Summary: Eve comes home.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 11
Kudos: 218





	Saturn

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers up to 3x05 (and also THAT still of 3x06).

_"I couldn't help but ask_

_For you to say it all again_

_I tried to write it down_

_But I could never find a pen_

_I'd give anything to hear_

_You say it one more time_

_That the universe was made_

_Just to be seen by my eyes"_

_Saturn - Sleeping At Last_

Eve comes back home.

Niko is not dead, but he could as well be since he’s on a ventilator, in a medically induced coma, and the chances for him to wake up are slim to none.

 _Villanelle_. That’s what she thought when she first came across the note. But then, would she be really that stupid? Stupid is the last adjective Eve would use to describe her. She’s reckless, and impulsive, and so goddamn annoying that she wants to throttle her every single time they’re together, but she’s not stupid. She’s too brilliant for her own good, and her knowledge of it is going to be her downfall one day, of that Eve is sure.

So she comes home. Or, she comes back to England, because she hasn’t felt at home in a long, long time. She opens the door, trying not to make too much noise because it’s 3 AM and the neighbors are going to complain, the walls are fucking paper thin and you can hear your own breaths through them.

She wants nothing more than crawl into bed and fall into a dreamless slumber, to forget about everything and everyone for a few hours. To get out of it, out of all of it. Sometimes she still thinks it’s all a twisted dream, that she will wake up in her old flat, next to her husband, and everything that happened in the last year will reveal itself to be just a really bizarre and gory byproduct of her brain. Honey colored hair, catlike eyes and everything.

She can almost smell her perfume, still lingering in the air after the bus incident.

Wait.

She _can_ smell her perfume.

She whirls around, almost giving herself whiplash from the sheer force of it. There’s definitely a lump on her couch. A Villanelle shaped lump. She looks asleep, her chest rising and falling gently, her breathing even. She doesn’t seem to have noticed her entrance.

That’s strange. You would expect lighting fast reflexes from a world class assassin.

She shouldn’t go next to her, so of course that’s what she does. She approaches her slowly, trying to make no noise. Villanelle looks rough, her clothes askew, hair all over the place and knuckles raw and bloody. She looks like she got into a fight.

Eve has the itch to touch her face, to see if she’s real, to see if she’s _really_ there, in her house.

Villanelle opens one eye slowly then the other, trying to get things into focus. She blinks twice. Eve holds her breath, wants to run but her feet keep her firmly rooted to the ground.

She wants to ask Villanelle what the hell she’s doing here, she wants to yell at her to get the fuck out of her house and let her live her life. She should do it. After all the things Villanelle did to her, after all the things she _took_ from her, she deserves to be kicked out and screamed at. But Eve does none of those things, the vulnerable look in Villanelle’s eyes is nothing like she has ever seen. She looks tired. She looks broken. She looks painfully young. Even in that dishevelled state, Eve thinks that she looks _breathtaking_.

“Hello Eve, I am sorry for breaking in but I didn’t know where else to go.” She says in a small voice, smaller that she’s ever heard it.

“Don’t you have a cool house in Barcelona?”

“Who told you about it?”

“Konstantin did. Said you were living your best life on the ramblas.”

Villanelle is quiet for a second, then mumbles something unintelligible.

“What was that?”

“I said that there is no one else there. I am alone.”

Oh.

Okay, this is not what Eve was expecting. She doesn’t know how to deal with _this_ version of Villanelle. She still thinks that maybe Villanelle is just playing a part to get back at her for the headbutt. Eve takes a deep breath, tries to clear her thoughts before speaking again.

“What happened to your hands?”

“I was angry. And I punched a wall. To feel better.”

“Well, you usually punch people, so I guess that’s some progress.”

“My brother told me that he punches a sofa so he doesn’t have to punch people.”

“Your brother? Do you have a brother? Since when?”

“I thought he had died. He is still alive.”

“When did you talk to him?”

“A few days ago. I was in Russia. To see my family.”

“Your family?”

“Yes. I thought they were all dead, but they weren’t. I had Konstantin track them down and I went to see them.”

Judging by the state of her hands and by her appearance, that didn’t go so well.

“What happened?” Eve finds herself asking, curiosity rising into her like a tide.

Villanelle winces. She honestly to God _winces_ , and that’s when Eve is a hundred percent sure that this is not an act. This couldn’t be an act.

“I…they….she didn’t want me there.”

“Who?”

“My mother.”

Oh, God.

“Did she kick you out?”

“No. I killed her.”

_Oh, God._

“You what?!” The question comes out yelled, Eve’s voice shrill and high pitched. Villanelle winces again, her eyes widen and glaze over. Her lower lip trembles. She looks like she’s going to cry.

What the _fuck_ is happening here. Eve feels like she’s in the Twilight Zone. She tries to calm down, tries to speak with an even voice to not upset Villanelle further. She should laugh at herself for thinking such an outrageous predicament. She should want to hurt her even more, that’s what she should think. This is so, **so** fucked up.

“Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.” Eve finds herself saying, turning and starting to walk away from her.

Villanelle looks at Eve like she’s just grown a second head, then rises slowly ad follows her into the small kitchen without saying a word. She slumps on a chair, looking at her feet.

Eve is so rattled by Villanelle’s demeanor that for a good thirty seconds she just stands there, unmoving, looking at the shell that used to be her cocky, loud, larger than life nemesis. Then she opens the cupboards, finds some disinfectant and gauze and crouches in front of Villanelle.

Only then Villanelle looks up from the floor, she stares into Eve’s face with the same lost look she’s had on since she woke up. Eve pours some disinfectant on the gauze, takes Villanelle’s right hand and starts gently swiping at her knuckles.

Villanelle starts crying.

Eve is fucking _terrified_. She’s terrified and she doesn’t know what to do but she has to be the one to get some semblance of control on the situation because Villanelle looks like she’s going to fall apart and crumble at any moment, and that’s something that cannot happen. She can handle asshole Villanelle. She can handle impulsive assassin Villanelle. She absolutely cannot handle _hurt_ Villanelle, that much Eve knows.

Villanelle is still crying. It’s not an ugly sobbing anymore but a composed weep. Eve keeps tending at her wounds, finishing the right hand and then taking the left and cleaning the dried blood.

“What happened with your mother? Why did you kill her?” She tries to ask.

Villanelle wipes her eyes with her sleeve.

“She said I didn’t belong there. She said I ruined her.” Her voice starts to tremble again. “She said my darkness took everything from her.”

Eve doesn’t know what to say. Those are harsh words, coming from a mother. They must have cut deep, even for someone like Villanelle.

“Everyone called me Oksana there.” She says in a small voice.

“Well, that’s your birth name.”

“I thought we were going to the market.”

“What?”

“She said we were going to the market, I put on my shoes and my coat and went with her. We drove a bit, but the road was longer then the one we used to travel when we were going to the market.” Villanelle keeps talking, seemingly on a roll.

“We drove for two hours, and then we stopped in front of a building. My mother exited the car, opened the trunk and took out a suitcase. She asked me to get out of the car and go with her. We went into the building. She made me sit on a chair and told me she would be right back. After ten minutes or so a nun came and told me that my mother had to go but that she would come back and get me after a month or so. I never saw her again until four days ago.”

“Wait, she just left you there?”

“Yes, it was an orphanage.”

“Oh my God.”

“She said she put me there because I was bad from the beginning. She said I never cried as a baby. That’s not true. She was mean to me. She never hugged me. She never told me she loved me. She dumped me like trash. She was scared of me because she didn’t want to admit that she was just like me. That her darkness is my darkness. I had to kill her. I didn’t want to when I first got there, I just wanted to find my family.”

Another tear spills on the pavement.

The fact that Villanelle’s so aware of her own self should be frightening for Eve. It’s not. For the first time in the last 30 minutes, Eve feels unafraid.

“Listen, there’s more than one kind of family, you know?” Eve says. Villanelle looks at her curiously. Eve keeps going.

“There’s the family you’re born with, and then there’s the family you choose. The people you choose to love, the ones you want to spend your time with, the ones who make you feel like you belong, not in some space or some house, but just belong in the moments you spend with them. The people who make you feel good when you’re with them.”

“You mean the people that make you feel things?”

“Yes, good things. Okay, maybe sometimes you argue and they’re not always _always_ good things but then you make up and things become good again.”

“Like with us.”

Eve stops breathing for a second. Because she’s right, Villanelle is absolutely right and she just flung her own logic at her. Only, normal people argue with words and petty gestures and her and Villanelle argue with knives and guns and blood and headbutts. And tears. And kisses.

“Yes, like with us.” She finds herself saying, and she grasps Villanelle’s hand in hers to keep herself from crying.

Villanelle looks so genuinely happy and hopeful now that Eve thinks she would say anything, she would do anything to keep her smiling like that.

Well, who would have thought.

Their’s a love story, after all.

_“This is my family. I found it, all on my own. It's little, and broken, but still good.”_


End file.
